


and when you hold me like that (it's all coming back to me)

by the_nvisiblegirl



Series: Post-Episode Shenanigans (Season 5) [9]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e14 The One Where We're Trapped on TV, Established Relationship, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24557173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_nvisiblegirl/pseuds/the_nvisiblegirl
Summary: “So, not to be that girl but I was expecting a bigger reaction when we first got our memories back. Cause, you know, I came back from the dead. Again.”[A soft Avalance moment between them being booted from Star Trip and taking on the Fates.]
Relationships: Sara Lance/Ava Sharpe
Series: Post-Episode Shenanigans (Season 5) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734784
Comments: 5
Kudos: 150





	and when you hold me like that (it's all coming back to me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [polotiz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/polotiz/gifts).



> Y'all. I know this is more than a week late and it's literally been haunting me the entire time. But writer's block hit me out of nowhere. Plus, I had to move to a different country over the past weekend, which isn't exactly ideal during a pandemic. Anyway, I'm back to my usual post-episode bullshit. There's loads of hand holding. Face cradling. Cuddling. Because I feel like the reaction when they got their memories back was kind of... meh. Like, I get we were having other problems at the time but still. Ava saw Sara die right in front of her and then just... didn't react at all when she remembered? Didn't keep a hold of her for the rest of Mr. Parker's Culture-de-Sac? I call bullshit. So this is an attempt at explaining why.
> 
> Enjoy, punks!

Ava sighed, letting her eyes wander over the sea of grey surrounding her. She was still trying to get to terms with this strange new world Charlie and her sisters had created.

After being booted from their respective television shows and reuniting in some dingy backroom, the team had decided to find a place to get some rest before coming up with a plan to end the Fates once and for all the next morning.

They’d found an abandoned townhouse not too far from the Clotho Productions headquarters to settle down for the night. It was neither big nor fancy, just two bedrooms in various shades of grey, an open plan kitchen, a bathroom.

The others had graciously relinquished the room with the only actual bed to their two captains while they themselves would spend the night on various couches, chairs, and blankets haphazardly thrown onto the ground.

After what they’d been through in the past couple of days alone Ava was more than grateful for the moment of peace and quiet the relative privacy of the four grey walls gave them because she felt like there was another conversation to be had between the two of them. She’d watched Sara die. They needed to talk about that.

While waiting for the blonde to return from the bathroom, she’d changed into a grey ensemble that she had found in the closet because, while it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable piece of clothing, it definitely beat having to sleep in her blouse and skinny jeans.

She was perched on the edge of the bed, mentally running through what she was going to say to Sara, when a voice startled her out of her thoughts.

“Babe?”

Her eyes snapped up and were met with the sight of her girlfriend standing in the doorframe, now wearing an outfit similar to her own.

“Here,” she replied quietly, the sound enough for Sara to figure out where she was, cross the room, and settle down next to her without any issues.

For a while, they sat in silence. Then:

“So, not to be _that girl_ but I was expecting a bigger reaction when we first got our memories back.”

Ava could tell by the tone of her voice that she was going for a joke to lighten the mood but didn’t have the energy or mental capacity to participate in their usual banter. And while she appreciated the attempt to cheer her up, this was not the time for humor—not even the gallows kind. ****

When the taller woman remained quiet, Sara tried once more.

“Cause, you know, I came back from the dead. Again.”

Her lips quirked up in a half-smile.

Ava simply stared at her—acutely aware of that particular fact—mouth opening and closing several times without any words actually coming out.

Sara just waited, not saying anything, because she knew that Ava had to work through it all in her own head first. That she would say what she had to say eventually. When she was ready. ****

“I—I was afraid to touch you,” Ava admitted after a while, looking down at her hands fidgeting in her lap. The memory of the moment still made her heart stutter in her chest; everything returning to her with full force all at once—the pub, the zombies, _the pool table_ —together with the realization that they were trapped in some kind of alternate dimension.

She hadn’t known what was real and what wasn’t. Hadn’t known if she could trust her eyes and believe that the other woman was really, actually back.

Sara’s brows furrowed at the unexpected revelation. ****

“What?”

“I thought that, maybe, if I touched you, you would disappear. Just slip through my fingers and I would never see you again.”

“Ava,” Sara breathed, reaching across the space between them to take her girlfriend’s hand.

“Watching you there on that pool table and not being able to do anything to save you,” she trailed off, tears welling in her eyes at the memory. It had to be one of the most traumatizing moments of her life—worse than finding out she was a clone from the future or being kidnapped by a demon so he could use her body as a vessel for his lover. She gulped.

“I’m sorry.”

“Babe, it’s not your fault.”

The blonde squeezed Ava’s hand in reassurance.

She needed the other woman to know that she didn’t blame her for any of this. Sacrificing herself for the rest of the team had been a decision that Sara had made because she trusted her girlfriend to figure out a way to save them all; because she trusted her girlfriend with her life— _literally_.

“I should have fought harder, tried to think of something to stop them.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“But maybe it _would have_ ,” Ava argued, desperate to make the blonde understand how much she regretted not having managed to change things—not being smart, strong, fast enough to come up with something that could have prevented Sara’s death in the first place.

Sara let out a breath as she brought her other hand to Ava’s own and enveloped them, one thumb lightly brushing across the inside of the older woman’s wrist.

“I’m here, Ava. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere,” Sara said, reassuring her girlfriend—reassuring both of them—that they still had a chance to be happy, to have a future; that not all was lost quite yet.

“I can’t lose you. I just can’t.”

The blonde’s voice cracked as the first two tears dropped from her eyes and slowly ran down her cheeks.

“You won’t, I promise.”

“You can’t promise me that.”

Sara chuckled.

“When has what I can’t do ever stopped me before?”

A smile ghosted across Ava’s tear-stained face, just for a second.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Sara echoed. “We’ll get through this.”

Ava didn’t reply because, really, there was nothing left to say. There was no way of knowing if Sara would actually survive this, not when they were up against literal Goddesses that could kill you with a single look. Tears welled in the taller woman’s eyes once more. She sniffled.

Sara reached for her immediately and, even without her sight, her hands found Ava’s face with surprising accuracy.

She gently cradled soft cheeks, thumbs running back and forth to comfort her girlfriend, which seemed to be working because, after a moment, the taller woman leaned into the touch, tilting her head slightly to press her mouth against the edge of Sara’s palm. ****

“We’ve been through worse. Purgatory? 2213? Those Spock eyebrows?”

A wet snort escaped Ava’s throat. The eyebrows really had been terrible.

Before she could say anything in response, though, Sara leaned in, bringing her lips to the other woman’s. The kiss was slow, less dramatic than the one they’d shared on the ship before it went up in flames around them and they were transported back to reality—or what was left of it, anyway.

“Lie down,” Sara said when they eventually broke apart and Ava complied without protest, settling back against the mattress, head resting against a lumpy pillow. God, she missed the Waverider.

It was then, in that very moment that everything caught up with her at once.

She was exhausted—physically, emotionally. Tired to the bone after becoming immortal, losing Sara, and getting her back all in the span of a day. ****

But she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep because her head was still going a million miles a minute, thinking about nothing and everything all at once.

As if sensing her inner turmoil, Sara reached out, her hand landing on the outside of Ava’s thigh. The taller woman could feel the warmth of it through the coarse fabric of the ill-fitting pants and instantly craved more contact. Once again, Sara seemed to know exactly what she needed without her having to say a single word.

The blonde let her hand run up and underneath Ava’s shirt, across her torso until her palm was flat against her girlfriend’s diaphragm, thumb pointed upward in between her breasts. For a moment she let it rest there, feeling Ava’s muscles contract as her chest rose and fell with every breath, the movement helping to center her.

Eventually, she let her hand drop off the side and onto the mattress as she crawled up the other woman’s slender form, carefully settling on top of her like a blanket, bodies pressed together from head to toe, not an inch between them.

Sara’s lips were brushing against the side of her neck, fingers tangling into long blonde hair, and Ava wrapped her arms around the smaller woman’s shoulders to pull her even closer. She lay there, eyes closed and trying to breathe evenly, until the feeling of her girlfriend’s weight on top of her chest helped to finally calm her down enough to quiet all the terrible thoughts and memories in her head.

Instead, she concentrated on what she knew—on what mattered right now.

Sara was here. In her arms. _Alive_.

**Author's Note:**

> Again: I didn't end the story with spooning, be proud! (But I feel like Ava literally using Sara as a blanket is a step above that, anyway, so...)
> 
> Working on a police officer/teacher AU as well at the moment (and a bunch of post-finale stories) because of course I am.


End file.
